MikeHutton

Inductee Highlight | Robert Punter 🏀 Robert Punter, a 1965 DeMotte High School graduate, is best known for his 18 seasons as varsity boys’ basketball coach at Valparaiso High School, where he compiled a 302–117 record. His teams won nine Duneland Conference titles, nine sectional championships, two regionals, and one semi-state, highlighted by a 28–1 season and state runner-up finish in 1994. Punter coached four Indiana All-Stars, including 1994 Mr. Basketball Bryce Drew, a 2025 Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame inductee, and earned multiple Coach of the Year honors during his career. A three-year letterman at DeMotte, Punter earned his bachelor’s degree from Indiana State and a master’s from Valparaiso University. He spent 38 years teaching and coaching in Valparaiso Schools, including time leading JV and middle school teams.

New: Indiana Gov. Mike Braun's statewide approval is at just 25 percent.

The New York Times made news the loss leader for a $2 billion digital revenue machine, and this chart is the receipt. News-only subscribers dropped 65% since June 2022. Bundle subscribers grew 227%. That looks like a news collapse. But the NYT deliberately killed its standalone news product. They stopped marketing it. They made it nearly impossible to buy a news-only subscription on their website. They priced the full bundle (News + Games + Cooking + Athletic + Wirecutter) at $2/month introductory, cheaper than a standalone Games subscription. News-only ARPU is $13.33. Bundle ARPU is $12.92. Single non-news product ARPU is $3.36. Those 4.3 million single-product subscribers paying $3.36/month? They’re not the business. They’re the funnel. The NYT CEO said it explicitly on the earnings call: single products are “funnels to get people to subscribe” to the bundle. Games now accounts for over 50% of time spent inside the NYT app. Wordle, Connections, and the Mini pull 10+ million weekly players who never intended to read a news article. But half of all NYT subscribers now pay for the bundle, and bundle subscribers retain longer, engage more, and accept price increases. The bundle just went from $25 to $30/month. The result: digital revenue crossed $2 billion for the first time in 2025. Free cash flow hit $550 million. Adjusted operating margins reached 24% in Q4. Berkshire Hathaway just took a billion-dollar position. While the Washington Post cut 300 journalists last week, the Times added 1.4 million subscribers. This chart shows a news company that built an attention ecosystem where Wordle gets you in the door, Cooking keeps you at breakfast, The Athletic owns your commute, and by the time you think about canceling, you’d lose four products instead of one. The NYT figured out that the way to fund journalism in 2026 is to make sure you can’t quit the crossword.

It's like they're daring customers to dine and dash at this point

Statement from the Chicago Bears on a possible stadium development in Hammond, Ind.: "The passage of SB 27 would mark the most meaningful step forward in our stadium planning efforts to date. We are committed to finishing the remaining site-specific necessary due diligence to support our vision to build a world-class stadium near the Wolf Lake area in Hammond, Indiana. We appreciate the leadership shown by Governor Braun, Speaker Huston, Senator Mishler and members of the Indiana General Assembly in establishing this critical framework and path forward to deliver a premier venue for all of Chicagoland and a destination for Bears fans and visitors from across the globe. We value our partnership and look forward to continuing to build our working relationship together."